


Lives and Loves of the Giant Badger-Moles

by lilacsigil



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Background Suki/Sokka, F/F, Gaang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 16:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Suki studies earthbending, beetle-based warfare, and the perplexing Toph Bei Fong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lives and Loves of the Giant Badger-Moles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possibilityleft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/gifts).



> Many thanks to lea_hazel for beta reading.

Suki was fairly sure that the presents were meant to be stealthy, but there was really only one person she knew who would leave a little bouquet of quartz crystals tucked into her folded clothing, and it was not her boyfriend. 

"Hey, Toph." Suki found Toph squatting neatly by the fire that Katara had built and Zuko had lit. Even in the Fire Nation it was chilly in the early mornings. 

"Hey Suki. Katara left me in charge of the fish!" Toph used a stick to poke at six neatly filleted fish grilling over the fire. 

Suki peered at them dubiously. "They're Fire Nation fish. They'll probably poison us."

"Nah, the Water Tribe knows fish. Right now Katara's digging up some root vegetables and testing them on Zuko to see if they're edible."

Suki dropped down beside her. "Good plan. Aang's not going to eat the fish and we don't want to accidentally kill off the Avatar with whatever the Fire Nation equivalent of a purple-frilled yam is."

"I think the original plan was to ask Zuko if he recognised the local stuff, but he kept saying, 'I don't know, what does it look like cooked by a chef of the tenth level and served on a Fen An Era porcelain dish?'"

"Ha! Anyway, I only wanted to return something to you."

Toph immediately looked suspicious. "What? I didn't give you anything!"

"Yeah, you did." Suki leaned forward and kissed Toph lightly on the mouth. Toph made an odd squeaky noise and scrambled backwards. "That's from when I saved you at the Serpent's Pass."

"You don't just return kisses!" Toph stamped her foot and a series of little cracks spread out in the dirt around her. 

"Well, now we're even. I have a boyfriend, Toph, and I'm happy with him. Leave it alone, okay?"

"If you didn't care, then why did you wait all this time to say?" Toph stomped off towards her stone tent, abandoning the fish.

Suki picked up Toph's stick and poked at a blank-eyed fish head. "That could have gone better," she told the fish, feeling a little uncomfortable. Maybe she should have returned the presents instead, but she didn't like the thought of an angry Toph crushing the little crystal gifts.

The little presents stopped immediately, and it only took a day for Suki to realize she missed them. It didn't help that they had been replaced with surly silence and the occasional pebble flicked at the back of Suki's head. 

"Hey, quit it!" Sokka yelled at Toph after a clod of mud mysteriously landed on Suki's head, some splattering off onto him. 

"Shows what you know," Toph muttered, flicking out her fingers to retrieve the mud, pulling Suki's hair in the process. "I heard that in the Fire Kingdom rich ladies go and have baths in mud to make them beautiful."

Sokka snorted. "What, like a hippo-skunk? I saw one of those in Foggy Bottom Swamp and it wasn't pretty, let me tell you."

"It's true," Zuko said earnestly. "Hot sand, too. It's meant to draw impurities from the body and skin."

This immediately earned him a face full of mud, to the loud cackling of Aang, Sokka and Toph — Katara was currently in a huff with Zuko and paying him no attention — but Suki didn't laugh. Unlike benders, or even Sokka and the mighty boomerang, Suki had learned to fight at close quarters and be highly alert to body language. Toph tended to point her feet towards the person to whom she was paying most attention, and when she threw that mud it wasn't her target she was watching, it was Suki.

Two days later, they had stopped on an isolated part of the coast where they could safely hide Appa. Katara and Sokka had gone off to find them more provisions. Zuko had proven to be pretty useless at either scavenging or haggling, so he'd been left helping Aang brush Appa. Suki was meant to be starting a fire, but instead she strolled over to Toph, who had been reshaping the stony hill that sheltered Appa from view.

"What do you want?" Toph snapped. 

Without replying, Suki threw a knot of wood straight at Toph. Toph shifted her weight and neatly avoided it. 

"Toph, how did you see that? It was wood, not stone or metal."

Toph jumped down from the hill and stomped over to Suki. "Why are you throwing stuff at me? Is it payback for bending mud at you? I know you're into payback."

Suki stepped back, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. "No, nothing like that. Only training. I don't really understand how your earthbending works. I've trained against earthbenders before, back on Kyoshi Island, and throwing things was always the best way to take them down. That, or ropes."

"Oh." Toph immediately looked more relaxed to be talking about her favourite subject. "Well, I'm the best earthbender in the world, so obviously I'm better at it than they were."

"Obviously," Suki agreed.

Toph ran back a few steps. "Now, throw something at me." 

Suki cast about and found a relatively aerodynamic twig, which she launched at Toph with an overhand throw. Toph knocked it out of the air with a pebble and simultaneously locked Suki's feet in place with an outcrop of stone. Suki wobbled awkwardly, her feet stuck in a very odd position mid-throw. 

"Uh, Toph, I'm going to fall over."

Toph let her go. "See? It's the same as bending: you give it all away with your stance. Avatar Twinkletoes is the only one who can get the drop on me, and even he's got to work for it."

Suki nodded. "Okay, but what if someone uses a catapult or something?"

"Ever seen a catapult made without metal? Ever seen them throw something other than metal or stone?" Toph laughed, entirely confident. "Even burning pitch has bits of stone and earth in it."

"Thanks for the earthbending lesson, Toph."

"No problem, fellow Earth Kingdomite." 

Suki grinned. That had worked! She felt like she was back on regular terms with Toph already. She turned back to her assigned task of gathering kindling and wood for the fire, but as she picked up a fallen branch and several beetles ran out, an evil idea crossed her mind. Toph had said she was the best earthbender, so surely she'd appreciate testing her skills, right? 

Pulling her fan from her belt, Suki scooped up twenty or so of the hard-shelled little beetles. They curled up when she touched them, and it was tricky to balance the shiny shells on the fan when they kept rolling around. She walked over to Toph as casually as she could, but Toph still picked up something from her walk.

"What are you doing?" Toph snapped, her feet planted firmly and her stance alert.

"Training, of course!" Suki replied and flicked her fan upwards, sending a rain of beetles in Toph's direction. 

As Suki had suspected, Toph followed the arc of Suki's flip, deflecting the beetles that flew in a smooth arc from the edge of the fan towards her head. There had been beetles all over the fan, though, not just in the prime throwing spot, and Toph's deflection of the perfect throw left her open to the imperfect throw. A rain of beetles landed on her face and chest, where they unfolded themselves and ran around in a panic. 

"Eurgh!" Toph made a scooping gesture and a fine curtain of sandy earth surrounded her while she frantically shook off the crawling beetles. "Try that again, Suki! I'm shielded now."

Suki grinned widely. "Flawless fan victory! See, even the world's greatest earthbender can learn something new."

Instead of laughing as Suki had expected, Toph's face screwed up in fury and she launched herself at Suki, tackling her around the waist and hurling her to the ground.

"Do you think I'm so stupid? Do you think I'm a kid?" Toph sat on Suki and punched at her face, but even pinned, Suki could twist to avoid the hit. 

"No! No, I don't! I respect you like a Kyoshi Warrior! I don't want you to get killed through underestimating non-benders."

"Oh." Toph stopped trying to hit her. "Well, you could have said that instead of kissing me back."

Suki wriggled uncomfortably. "That was… I thought you were interested in Sokka? Or me?" Her voice trailed off.

"I knew it!" Toph smirked. "You don't go around kissing someone if you don't like them." She leaned down and planted a big kiss on Suki's lips. Suki didn't pull away as she had intended; instead, she kissed Toph back, as she had the other morning. Toph's lips were warm and Suki could feel her smiling as they kissed. 

"But I already have a boyfriend," Suki said weakly, even though she didn't want Toph to stop. She had no idea if Toph was using her earthbending to read Suki's body language as they kissed or if Toph was simply a great kisser, but it was definitely not the same as the girlish kisses she had shared with other Kyoshi Warriors. 

"I don't want to be your girlfriend!" Toph kissed Suki again and this time she let Suki's arms free, so Suki could wrap them around Toph's neck and pull her closer. 

"You don't?" Suki felt weirdly relieved but also disappointed. She didn't want to break up with Sokka, but she didn't want to stop kissing Toph either. 

Toph rolled off Suki to lie next to her on the warm ground, pressed up against her side and holding her hand. "No! I want to be like a badger-mole. You know I was practically raised by badger-moles, right?"

Suki giggled. "No, but it makes sense."

"So badger-moles fall in love all the time, but they don't go around getting married. They give each other presents and they serenade each other and they mate, and sometimes they stay together for a long time, but sometimes they don't. And they live in a big badger-mole sett with lots of other badger-moles, so they all have to get along. Hundreds of miles of tunnels is nothing to an earthbending badger-mole."

"Are you going to serenade me?"

Toph made a growling noise, then laughed. "My voice would have to get a lot deeper! But the badger-moles all got along perfectly and then I'd go home and my parents would be sitting around gossiping about who'd taken a lover and what a big dumb scandal it was. They talked right in front of me because they thought I didn't really understand. I couldn't wait to get back to the badger-moles who didn't make stupid rules like that, always setting people against each other. So I decided that if I ever liked someone that way, it would be better to be a badger-mole than a person. And I like you."

Suki laughed, too. "I've never been compared to a badger-mole before, but I think from you it's a big compliment." She leaned over and kissed Toph again. "Yeah, I love Sokka, but if he says anything, I'll tell him that this is love badger-mole style. No secrets and no lies, only love."

Toph kissed her back. "For you, I'll work on that serenade." She grinned, then plucked one last beetle out of her hair and put it on Suki's forehead. "And there's your badger-mole courting gift." 

Suki shrieked and flicked off the crawling beetle, then raced after the fleeing, giggling Toph. She wasn't sure if she was going to fight, tickle or kiss her into submission, but she was sure it was going to be fun.


End file.
